“Choosing Hope: Why Sunflowers Turn Towards the Sun” with Dr. Ursula Goodenough

“Choosing Hope: Why Sunflowers Turn Towards the Sun”
Dr. Ursula Goodenough

All creatures, including humans, are wired for hope, aiming for future outcomes that sustain and nourish and enable the generation of offspring. Hopes are mediated by receptors that are attuned to these desires, detecting sunlight and circadian rhythms in the sunflower and hormones and warmth in the turtle, receptors that have been preserved with modification during three billion years of evolutionary history. Human hoping is not a choice; it resides deep in our bones. The move is not to choose hope – it’s always there, always operant – but to tame competing feeling-states and behaviors such as fear or discouragement or apathy or anger.

Ursula Goodenough is Professor of Biology Emerita at Washington University who now
lives on Martha’s Vineyard, MA and is a member of the UU Society of Martha’s Vineyard. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College, an M.A. from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. She has five children and ten grandchildren. 
She taught cell biology and molecular evolution and engaged in research that focused on the sexual cycle of a green soil alga, on ciliary motility, and on algal biofuel precursors. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Microbiology Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a past
president of the American Society for Cell Biology. 
She and others are developing what is called a religious naturalist orientation and she co-founded the Religious Naturalist Association. A new edition of her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Emerged and Evolved, describes her understandings of this orientation. View our Order of Service here: UUSMV OOS December 28, 2025